The International Connection

A couple hundred years ago, news traveled slow. Families separated by space were separated by time, writing and receiving hand written and delivered letters. Speed up to my own childhood, when a call to Europe or South America was a long distance call that was a little costly, and a letter would still take at least a few days to arrive. Speed up to today. This morning I received e-mail from Heather Haley in Vancouver, Canada and Jorge Luiz Antonio from somewhere in Brazil within a minute of each of them hitting the virtual send button.

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Heather sent the program for SEE THE Voice: Visible Verse 2008 @ Pacific Cinémathèque on Thursday, November 6, 2008 Time: 7:30pm – 10:30pm Location: 1131 Howe St Vancouver, BC. “Visible Verse is North America’s sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant poetry video and film.” The one day poetry video festival features entries from around Canada, India, Finland and in the USA from Chicago, New York and Vallejo. Representing for Vallejo, CA, second to last on the program, is my poetry video “Eat!” Thanks to Heather for including my video, and to Sabine Worthmann, Heinrich Koebberling, Vlatko Kugan and Ralph Kessler, for the great soundtrack.

Jorge wrote to me from Brazil about his book “Electronic Poetry: Negotiations with Digital Processes,” because of his interest in the L&BH Internet Radio Hour call-in show on Tuesday nights. The book “studies the semiotic negotiations of poetry with computational technologies – mediation, intervention and transmutation -, whose purpose is to present concepts and examples of a poetry composed with words, static and/or dynamic images, sounds, hypertextuality, hypermedia and interactivity, all formatted by computer program languages which have been developing in digital media since the end of the 1950s.” Whew, that’s a lot to digest, and he said his “English is not so good!”

Apparently this has all been going on since the 1950’s. But I am catching on. I visited Jorge’s directory of Brazilian Digital Art and Poetry on the Web and look forward to sharing more with this Brazilian connection in the vast Arts Web that we are all weaving together.

Speaking of the radio show, last night I took calls from Canada, Florida and a few from Oakland and San Francisco. One day soon I believe someone, somewhere in Africa or Australia or South America will push that “click to talk” button or use their internet telephone connection to connect with Listen & Be Heard, to listen and be heard. Culture Unplugged, with it’s main office in India, has used the Listen & Be Heard Bulletin Board to post an international call for films, alongside the Newport Beach Film Festival here in California. I expect I will receive arts video submissions from India or Thailand or Jamaica or YOU, for Listen & Be Heard TV within the year.

The international connection is the single most valuable aspect of our modern technology. In the hands of creators, in the hands of the collective imagination for the future, we have a vast ocean of possibilities available to us like never before. We can connect with our international neighbors as easily as we can walk across the street and ring our neighbor’s doorbell. But nothing is certain in the future, and most of this won’t work if the plug gets pulled from the socket. Make sure you take advantage of what’s available to you while you can. There’s no telling how you may use what you gain as the future unfolds.

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Dear Pedro,
John Dean interrupted my
regularly scheduled Sesame Street
when you were getting turned on to grass
i was watching Vietnam on TV
when you met Agent Orange
and he stuck to you like glue
i didn’t know i just heard
it was the wo...